Why Your B Student Will Be OK

Breathe easy, parents of B students. Your child doesn’t have to be top of the class to be successful in life.

WORDS MISTY JACKSON-MILLER

NANCY GRAHAM OF DALLAS says that some people were “shocked” when she mentioned she wasn’t going to actively push her son Babe, 9, into one of Dallas Independent School District’s magnet programs. He’s a good student and turns his homework in on time, but he isn’t that interested in school. Rather, he has a wide variety of interests outside of class, like Minecraft and tae kwon do. Most of all, he loves spending time with his friends.

When Babe was in first grade, Graham recalls being a little bit nervous about his reading assessment when she sat down for a parent-teacher conference. But Babe’s teacher immediately put her at ease. Babe was hanging in there and completing his assignments. And as the teacher explained, “You’ve got the ones who shoot up and the ones who creep up, but by the time they get to third grade, it all evens out.”

So Graham helps Babe with his homework. She throws a football with him on the weekends. “If we start something, we finish it,” she says. “The game, the season, we’ll follow through with it.” But she doesn’t pressure her son to win lots of awards and trophies. Yes, she cheers for him when he catches a football, but she is careful not to attach too much value to a single achievement.

“Look, there’s something to be said about striving to make sure my child is happy, rather than be the fastest or the smartest kid out there,” says Graham. “I want him to learn how to navigate the world and get through social events in time—in his time. And there’s not just one way to get there.”

This is a sentiment strongly echoed by Aileen Wainwright, a licensed clinical social worker based in Keller. Kids who don’t excel in school have so much to offer the world as they come into adulthood. “Average kiddos can be great leaders, and they have much better social skills. They’re good listeners and they tend to have a very high emotional intelligence.”

Since psychologist Daniel Goleman published Emotional Intelligence in the mid-’90s, study after study has confirmed that emotional intelligence is a better predictor of success than IQ or test scores—meaning kids who are good at, say, finding friends on the playground could end up with leadership roles and higher salaries than their book-smart but socially unsavvy peers.

The professional and political worlds are rife with leaders who were not top of their class but rocketed to success once free to pursue their interests. Some worked hard, but were gifted in areas like creativity and entrepreneurship rather than academia. Others found school boring and not worth their effort, but discovered other passions they could pour their energy into.

Think Richard Branson, who dropped out of high school, where he performed poorly, to follow his entrepreneurial bent and now has a net worth of over $5 billion. Or President Joe Biden, whose college grades were “never exceptional” according to The New York Times, but who made it into law school by sheer force of personality and later found his passion in politics.

And there’s former President George W. Bush, who famously told graduating Yale students: “To the C students, I say, you too can be president.” He would know.

So not nabbing that valedictorian spot doesn’t mean your child is destined for a life of mediocrity— and in the nearer future, it doesn’t mean your child won’t earn a place at his or her dream college. In fact, nonacademic traits like “concern for others and the common good” are highly desirable in prospective students for many college admissions offices. Concern for others can be a very difficult quality to assess, but in a 2016 report by Harvard’s Making Caring Common project, the authors suggest it can be demonstrated in the less splashy, sometimes overlooked day-to-day activities like “contributions to one’s family and the community” activities that some kids may naturally be drawn to instead of schoolwork.

Redefining Success

When parents push too hard for their children to excel, there can be unintended physical and emotional consequences. Children are particularly susceptible to sports injuries. And with athletics or academics (and especially with both in the equation), there’s also an emotional risk of burning out, which can carry into adolescence and young adulthood and contribute to depression and anxiety.

In her Fort Worth counseling practice, Stephanie Adams, a licensed professional counselor, sees a lot of teenagers and college students with anxiety disorders. Many of her clients “don’t know how to slow down or take care of themselves,” and because many of them are so used to having structured activity, “they get overwhelmed when their parents aren’t there to manage their schedules or plan their activities or even take care of the day-to-day things like laundry and picking up after themselves.”

Given the risks, why are we putting so much pressure on our kids to excel—to “be the best, next better thing,” as Adams describes it? Why are we trying to box our kids in with such a narrow definition of success?

Instead, says Adams, parents should nurture and value “the assets that these kids already have—for example, that they are good to people, they are kind to people, they are good at finding solutions to difficult challenges.”

Some kids who don’t excel in the classroom will climb the ladder to the C-suite and the White House. Others will grow up to be good friends, good parents, good employees—allaround good people who successfully pursue their passions and make an impact in their communities.

“An angel on earth,” is how Jana Bailey, 59, of Richardson, describes her son Brandon, 25. “What he’s accomplished in such a short amount of time; he’s truly an amazing individual.”

Brandon never went through a gifted and talented program or took a bunch of honors classes. When it came to academics, “school was just not very high on my priority board,” says Brandon. “I thought as long I passed, I’m good.”

And yet, when Brandon was a teenager, the Bailey house was always full of kids. “It was  definitely the place to be!” laughs Bailey. “Brandon treats everyone as a friend, no matter what his or  her background.”

His ability to connect with different people, across so many different backgrounds, “to understand the lives people live,” has helped pave his way to adult success.

He graduated from Oklahoma State University and has a great career in account management ahead of him. He is a loving husband and devoted father of twin daughters. He and his wife are even foster parents, which are sorely needed here in Texas. Last year, he ran his first half-marathon.

So even though his parents didn’t push him to front-load his CV, Brandon found his own road to success. Now he’s passing those ideals on to his girls. He wants them “to find their niche” and hopes to inspire in them qualities like “kindness” and “thoughtfulness.”

And he’s thinking about taking on a full marathon next.